BentoBox News

Introducing Loyalty Program — a Free Diner Reward Program from BentoBox

February 16, 2021

BentoBox unveils a free, easy loyalty program for restaurants selling through the platform.

Over the past year, BentoBox has built solutions to generate revenue for restaurants in a sustainable way. The team has been hyper-focused on releasing features that run at no cost, becoming revenue-generating machines over time.

The Need for Free, Automatic Ways to Guarantee Ongoing Revenue for Restaurants

Restaurants today need the ability to drive demand on their own, rather than relying on marketplaces for discovery, only to share profits. A restaurant’s success relies on driving an initial direct order and then bringing that diner back. Our goal is to empower restaurants to do both.

Today, we’re excited to introduce BentoBox's Loyalty Program, a new tool that helps each restaurant build long-term loyalty, available to turn on at no additional charge and with any of the following:

This loyalty offering is complimentary for restaurants no matter the database size and automates diner enrollment, purchase tracking over time, and reward distribution. Keep reading for a sneak peek at what the diner and operator experiences look like.

Learn More about our Loyalty Program

Already a customer? Learn how to activate your program now.

5 Big Gaps that our Loyalty Program Now Fills in Restaurant Tech

Loyalty Program exists to remove these historical pain points for restaurants:

1. Difficulty in recognizing loyal online customers

The common alternative, until now, has been for diners to regularly order from the same restaurant through a marketplace like Grubhub or UberEats. Marketplaces are committed to bringing diners back — but to any myriad of restaurants. They want loyalty to their platform, not the restaurant. If a diner does reorder from the same restaurant, another commission fee is charged as though it’s a new customer.

Loyalty Program changes the game by putting restaurants in control.

Bento Ordering has always empowered restaurants to own their own customer database with pickup and delivery orders and now our built-in Loyalty Program recognizes and rewards loyal customers automatically. This helps restaurants drive secondary orders at no operational or marketing cost — rewarding repeat diners.

2. No automatic way to incentivize reorders

There are many ways for diners to place an order, which makes building diner loyalty difficult for restaurants. The restaurant must spend effort — and often budget — to keep itself top-of-mind with the diner and give a reason to come back directly to the restaurant’s website.

Many restaurants are sending out weekly one-off marketing campaigns, requiring staff to write emails, finalize graphics, curate recipient lists, and schedule campaigns. These efforts require hours of work each week with little to no way of tracking key insights like revenue generated.

BentoBox has worked hard to help restaurants automatically incentivize direct orders — through:

Partnering with Google to build an integration with Search and Maps
Adding Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout
Introducing Automated Marketing Campaigns to drive repeat orders.

And now, our Loyalty Program completes the guest lifecycle, with every diner working towards a reward that unlocks and redeems itself once a milestone is hit.

This new offering takes restaurants less than five minutes to activate. From there, guests are incentivized with each order over time — no manual email campaigns required. Plus, performance metrics are shown automatically, without any spreadsheets or staff.

3. Simplicity is scarce with loyalty programs

Loyalty programs should be simple. Operators have no time to learn or manage complicated loyalty programs. Many platforms require a dedicated staff member to monitor the program on a weekly or monthly basis. Setting up points-based systems can involve calculations, help center articles and patience. On top of that, budgets are tight and new platforms cost money. There aren’t any offerings on the market that fit all of the following criteria: quick to set up, easy to manage and built into an existing platform that staff members are already familiar with.

Our Loyalty Program solves all of these needs: it is simple to activate. It runs on its own. It lives within BentoBox.

Any restaurant operators — tech-savvy or not — can easily set a milestone threshold, decide on a reward, and more. No point system. No calculators.

Ready to turn first-time diners into loyal customers with our Loyalty Program?

Turn on your Loyalty Program, if you’re already a customer
Not a customer yet? Get a demo.

4. Restaurants have different needs. Loyalty programs weren’t meeting them

Another major pain point with loyalty programs for restaurants, up until now, has been the guest experience. Restaurants need to control their program’s visibility and language to fit their brand.

Loyalty Program personalizes a diner rewards program for each restaurant based on two program track options: diners either are aware that they are working towards a reward or they are unaware, receiving a surprise reward once they hit a milestone set by the restaurant.

For quick-service restaurants that want explicit reward programs, diners see a progress bar showing their status and incentivizing them to return. For fine dining restaurants that want a more subtle approach, Loyalty Program delivers a serendipitous reward experience to their most loyal customers.

If the program is visible, each restaurant’s progress bar automatically matches the business’s brand at checkout and in order receipts.

This progress bar sets expectations with diners, clearly laying out their spend or order history so far, distance to reward, and what the reward will be. Email messaging is personalized to each restaurant, too.

An “Almost There” email and “Reward Email” are both completely customizable, down to their subject lines, header images, headlines, body language, and more. Already a BentoBox customer? Activate your loyalty program in under 5 minutes.

5. Diner convenience takes a backseat with loyalty programs

This isn’t limited to the restaurant industry, either. Whether it’s flights, hotels, cars, haircare, fashion — think about signing up to enroll and then redeeming points with a new purchase.

Loyalty programs require three manual actions that create friction points for consumers:

Take an added action to enroll with the first purchase to become eligible for rewards.
Apply credentials for future orders to be recognized by the program.
Manually add a redemption code for a reward once it’s unlocked.

BentoBox's Loyalty Program enrolls every diner automatically at first purchase. It then automatically applies future orders to program advancement and auto-redeems rewards once they're unlocked — all by email address used at checkout. No logins, passwords, or manual steps to apply future orders to the reward program.

How Loyalty Program Builds Diner Retention and Drives More Restaurant Revenue

The guest experience with BentoBox's Loyalty Program makes it easy for diners to understand where they are and encourages them to return faster to earn or redeem their reward.

Shows a progress bar at checkout and in order receipts, and sends emails to diners when they are approaching a reward.

Notifies a diner once they’ve unlocked a reward — by email and at order checkout.

Once a reward is unlocked, the code is automatically applied at checkout for diners.

The entire BentoBox team — from product to our software engineers, our global support team, customer success and more — are all excited for this next adventure with restaurants. Here’s to faster revenue for restaurants, more loyalty at no cost and even better ordering experiences!

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